Charlie Trotter's eponymous restaurant in Chicago has for years been a stalwart on lists that rate the world’s very best restaurants. And with good reason – the place exudes excellence and has never rested on its laurels despite all the plaudits.
The Lincoln Park restaurant with its understated, almost homely interior, offers not one but three daily degustation menus for guest to chose between: the Grand Menu, which pairs carefully selected wines with each of its many tempting courses; the Vegetable Menu, which while not strictly vegetarian, celebrates the vegetable as a central rather than a side element in each of the dishes on offer; and the epic 15 course Kitchen Table Menu (which, as its name implies, is served at a special table amid the buzz of the restaurant kitchen). Sample dishes from the latter include Crawford Farm Lamb Loin with Porcini Mushrooms & Black Burgundy Truffles and Big Eye Tuna with Horseradish Emulsion. Ingredients are without exception, the finest, freshest obtainable and the wine cellar is ridiculously well-stocked with bottles from practically every wine-producing country on the planet.